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Canada
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Canada
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Canada
Ebook491 pages9 hours

Canada

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this ebook

The only writer ever to win both the Pulitzer Prize and Pen/Faulkner Award for a single novel (Independence Day) Richard Ford follows the completion of his acclaimed Bascombe trilogy with Canada. After a five-year hiatus, an undisputed American master delivers a haunting and elemental novel about the cataclysm that undoes one teenage boy’s family, and the stark and unforgiving landscape in which he attempts to find grace.

A powerful and unforgettable tale of the violence lurking at the heart of the world, Richard Ford’s Canada will resonate long and loud for readers of stark and sweeping novels of American life, from the novels of Cheever and Carver to the works of Philip Roth, Charles Frazier, Richard Russo, and Jonathan Franzen.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateMay 22, 2012
ISBN9780062096807
Author

Richard Ford

Richard Ford is the author of The Sportswriter; Independence Day, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award; The Lay of the Land; and the New York Times bestseller Canada. His short story collections include the bestseller Let Me Be Frank With You, Sorry for Your Trouble, Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins, which contain many widely anthologized stories. He lives in New Orleans with his wife Kristina Ford.

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Reviews for Canada

Rating: 3.664650475806452 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

744 ratings76 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    No suspense, minimal action, no plot twists/surprises, endless, repetitive descriptions of the same people/scenery/smells, a dull main character- Dell.....I just kept waiting for something meaningful to happen to reward me for slogging through this long, slow novel. Two stars for masterful descriptions of towns, rooms, and all of those smells, but so little happened - actually things happened but it felt like Dell was sleep- walking through all of it.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Endless navel gazing, very little action (for a story *supposedly* about a bank robbery and murder), and so very boring. Decent writing, but holy GOD, there was waaaay too much of it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Strange novel written from the perspective of an adolescent (who matures into a grown man) who, with his twin sister, finds himself adrift after his parents get arrested for an inept bank robbery. Before the authorities realize that the children are alone and put them into the foster care system, the sister runs away. A workplace friend of the jailed mother transports the narrator from his home in Montana to a hotel that her brother owns in a small town in Saskatchewan. A lot happens in the novel, and there's a lot for both the narrator and the reader to chew on.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The narrator, Dell, now 66 and retired, recalls the events of his 15th year, the year his parents robbed a bank and went to jail. He and his sister were left abandoned in their home. His fraternal twin sister, Berner, runs away, but Dell is driven from Great Falls, Montana, by his mother’s friend, north into Saskatchewan. He is left in the care of a older man who owns a hotel, and a Metis goose hunter guide and trapper, eventually witnesses a double murder. His voice is unusual, skeptical, commenting on the different ways that his life could have turned. He is especially interested in how decisions that are reckless and stupid seem reasonable at the time they are made. His father was in the Air Force, first as a bombadier in the Pacific in WWII, then a supply officer. He was involved in a fraudulent scheme at the Air Force base, involving Indians and stolen cattle, and when he cannot pay one of the Indians, the idea of the bank robbery is hatched. His wife is a Jewish intellectual out of place in Great Falls, but goes along with the bank robbery scheme, possibly to protect Dell from involvment, possibly to escape from her life. The writing flows easily, the characterizations are subtle and deft. I was glad for the last part, a sort of epilogue describing the later years of characters that I had come to care about.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Bev Parsons and his wife Neeva are a mismatched pair. He is a smiling gregarious six-foot tall retired Air Force bombardier from the south. The daughter of Jewish immigrants, she is an intense and aloof diminutive school teacher. A hasty marriage due to an impending birth brings these two together, and an equally hasty decision to rob a bank tears the entire family apart leaving their fifteen year old twins Dell and Berner orphaned. Neeva, anticipating an impending arrest, had arranged for a co-worker to intercept the twins before they could be placed into the care of the state, but the two still spend a few days adrift. Berner decides to follow her own path. Dell is transported over the border and into Canada and the care of Arthur Remlinger. Remlinger is an expat American educated and ejected from Harvard whose outward demeanor fools few.Told majestically from Dell’s perspective Canada is his story. He is an unremarkable fifteen year old who’s only wish is to start the coming school year by joining the chess club yet finds himself as far away from normal as possible. Dell survives to convey a life lived and suggests the means to get there.Richard Ford has managed to bring the characters and the Canadian prairie to life. The story unfolds slowly with the introduction of the characters, but then the pages fly. I do have a few issues with the novel. It truly is a slow go for about 100 pages, and the ending did seem a bit rushed, but overall Ford paints pictures with words and the time spent was well worth the effort.I found Canada to be an interesting book. I found the beginning to be in the vein of Empire Falls by Richard Russo and, unlike Susan, I found the beginning to be the faster read. The premise is unique and the characters are as well. You feel the desolation of both the Canadian prairie as well as Dell, in a world where he knows no one.It's definitely worth the read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I read this in ebook format. It's an amazing book. It has some of the most emotionally painful scenes I have ever read. When the narrator, Dell, and his sister visit their arrested parents in the jail every details brings out what a sad, experience this is. Yet, as a reader I didn't feel manipulated. This is how it would really feel. The author makes frequent use of repetition and foreshadowing. Again, it is done so naturally I never felt it was artificial. When the narrator says he never went to a place again or never saw someone again, you know something important is going to happen.I also have this story in audiobook format. I intend to listen to it later on.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a compelling story of one family (two adults; two children) -- make no mistake about it. But I thought it took Richard Ford (a consummate writer, by the way) a long time to tell it.

    By the end of the story, I was exhausted. It was emotionally wrenching -- particularly from the standpoint of Dell (the boy in the story).

    I highly recommend "Canada" -- but possibly not as a first read (if you haven't already read any of Ford's other works).
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I listened to the audio version which I felt was done wonderfully. I put this on reserve at the library a long time ago based on reviews. I didn't remember what it was supposed to be about. Beautifully written, in my opinion.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Fifteen year old Del Parsons and his twin sister Berner seem to be living a normal enough life in 1960 Montana. Their mother is a school teacher and their father is a newly retired decorated bombardier. Their life is shattered however when their normal enough parents are arrested for bank robbery. While his sister runs away to California, Del is instead taken to Canada to live with the eccentric brother of one of his mother's friends. At first Del seems to do well enough in Canada, but as Del has already learned, people aren't always what they seem. And a normal enough life can be changed in an instant. Canada was so well reviewed that I began the novel thinking I would love it. The plot of the novel is certainly interesting and the Parson's are each quirky and interesting in their own way. The real weakness of the novel is how much time it takes for anything to happen. They are two major events that happen in Canada, neither of which is a surprise as the author lets the reader in on it well before he gets around to actually describing it in the story. But there is buildup and then there is a buildup. Unfortunately Canada spends huge chunks going over and over the same points. By the time the reader gets to the major events, any sense of drama has been totally sucked out of the story. Canada has many strong points, but maybe tighter editing could have made it truly great.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I Really enjoyed this one. I thought the pace was a bit slow in the middle, but perhaps necessary. The chapters were short during the tumultuous early years when his parents become criminals, than longer during his time in the prairies of Canada, when time really slows down for the young protagonist son. Really gave me a sense of time and space. It was my first book by Richard Ford and I am looking forward to another one. Really loved his writing. I so wanted to give this 5 stars, but not this time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    a coming of age book, the teller of the story is a 15 year boy. of course is actually told by him when he is 66, he looks back and tries to use his 15 year voice. his is molded by two crimes, a bank robbery committed by his parents and a murder by a man that is responsible after his parents go to prison. the book is set in the 60s.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I finished this the other night, and it was fantastic. The story is really pretty straightforward, although Ford does an interesting thing of giving at least part of the plot away well before the events actually happen (even the title, in a way, is a spoiler.) So the suspense builds throughout each half of the book, since the reader already kind of knows what's going to happen, but not exactly. The novel is not really about the "spoiled" parts of the plot, but rather what results from them.

    Yet this is no simple crime and coming-of-age story, either. Although it is an exciting read and a genuine page-turner, it is also beautifully written and at times incredibly powerful, even in the smallest, quietest scenes, such as when the narrator meets up again with another character when they are both much older. Typical of Ford, there are also long passages of introspective monologues, I guess I'd call them that, but they never veer into boring navel-gazing or pretension. This novel, as "simple" as it is, touches on a great range of themes: national identity, how your environment influences your personality, why good people do bad things (and, more interestingly, the reverse), the difficulties of figuring out what the hell is going on, especially for children, and who knows what else. One of his best books.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I finished this book with a strong feeling that Richard Ford is a very fine writer - but I find it really hard to identify what aspect of the work made me feel that way. It's a long-ish book, but there wasn't a single moment when I wished it would finish. On the other hand, it's not a page-turner that you want to keep reading to find out what happened - Ford summarizes the major dramatic events of the book in the first two sentences! Lesser writers need to keep such events secret from the reader to give an incentive to keep reading.You'll have to read what more eloquent reviewers say if you want to get a better idea why this book is so good. All I can say is that Ford's characters each have a view of the world that is very compelling in their own way. I somehow got the feeling that Richard Ford knows the way the world works.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I have read the Sportswriter trilogy and a couple other books by Richard Ford. He is one of my favorite writers. Unlike most of the reviews here, I was disappointed in "Canada". Most of the book was told through the narration of the main character, young Dell Parsons. Unfortunately, his inner self did not match his words and actions. The net result was a flat character with a good inner life. There is no doubting Ford's writing skill. This was enjoyable but I found some of his descriptions excessive. If his style was meant to convey the bleakness of the landscape and the hopelessness of the characters, then he did a good job. Because he foretold the main events of the book, I thought the book lacked tension. When the bank robbery and murders actually occurred I had no sense of the feel for the events. A minor point that that has not been raised in any of the reviews that I have read is that the subsequent actions of Dell and the authorities to the murders made no sense. These 2 men felt strongly that Arthur Remlinger had committed the murder bombing 15 years before. Makes sense they would have communicated this to someone before they came to Canada to confront him. Ford has their car being driven into the US and 2 people registering at a hotel as the 2 Americans. I would think that the authorities would have been able to produce pictures of the victims and discover that they were not the people registered at the hotel. A thorough investigation which would have occurred in 1960 would have brought Dell's involvement to the surface. I also find it hard to believe that a 15 year old who witnesses a double homicide would keep it to himself for his entire life and certainly would tell the authorities once he was out of the influence and control of the murderer. This failure to acknowledge the possibility of this happening allowed Ford to let Parsons continue on his future life. Because the readers and reviewers tend to focus on the language and inner conflicts in the book, this hole in the plot is never acknowledged. I will continue to read Richard Ford but this book does not measure up to his previous work.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is an odd, dull book. The main character endures episodes with three sad, pathetic adults (two of them his parents), and survives, at least in part through a detachment from these characters and their acts. The narrative is unusual in that the author foretells the major events, and then slowly give you the context for the action. None of the characters are likeable, which is fine, but I found myself thinking, three quarters through this book, that I did not care what happened to the plot or characters.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The first two sentences of Richard Ford’s Canada are, I suspect, destined to be among the most quoted of 2012. Even so, I cannot resist using them here, too, because they are the perfect opening for the book:“First, I’ll tell you about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.” These words are spoken by 65-year-old Dell Parsons, the book’s narrator, as he considers the fifteen-year old boy he was in 1960 just before his parents made the stupid decision that would almost destroy him and Berner, his twin sister. The Parsons had been transferred to Montana by the U.S. Air Force, but now Dell’s father is a civilian, and having decided that Great Falls is a good place to raise his family, Bev Parsons is struggling to find a job that will allow him to do that. To young Dell, nothing is more important than the fast-approaching start of his freshman year in the town’s public high school. Up to now, the twins have been encouraged not to develop ties to the places they pass through with the Air Force, so Dell is eager to transform Great Falls into the hometown he has never known.But when Dell’s parents are arrested for a North Dakota bank robbery, his hopes of finally settling down and making long term friends are destroyed before he can even set foot in his new school. Dell and Berner are surprised to find themselves, at least temporarily, forgotten by the legal system that has both their parents locked tight in the city jail. After Berner, the worldly twin, strikes out on her own, his mother’s only friend agrees to deliver Dell to her brother in the remote prairies of Saskatchewan in order to keep him from falling into the hands of Montana juvenile authorities.There, still a very naïve child at fifteen, Dell falls under the control and influence of two men who will further destroy his sense of who he is. Charlie Quarters, the Leonard Hotel’s strange, half-breed hunting guide into whose charge Dell is delivered, will use him as an extra pair of hands. Arthur Remlinger, an American hiding out in Canada for reasons of his own, is the hotel’s owner. Unfortunately for Dell, Remlinger, a sociopath of sorts, will never be the father figure he needs so badly, and will, instead, almost finish the job of destroying his life.Canada is a character-driven novel with the plot of a crime thriller, a literary novel that will keep the reader turning pages. Throughout his narrative, Dell Parsons gives intriguing little hints that all is not as it seems and that he should have figured things out sooner than he did. Ford’s characters are so well developed that even their most bizarre actions are believable in the context of who the reader knows them to be. With perhaps one exception (Charlie Quarters), there are no black and white characters in Canada. Each has a distinct set of strengths, weaknesses, and motivations that allows them to be sucked into whatever happens around them.Canada is about borders – literal ones and symbolic ones – and what they really mean. The lesson for Dell Parsons is that once some borders are crossed, they are crossed forever. There is no going back.Rated at: 5.0
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    “Canada” is a meditation. Like life on the 49th parallel, it is at times bleak but also majestic in scope. It is a story of youth represented by summer below the 49th in Great Falls, Montana and growth represented by winter above the 49th.As the story opens we are told from the beginning that Dell Parson’s parents have committed a bank robbery, been jailed, his mother has committed suicide and he and his sister have been left to fend mostly for themselves and to find their way in the world without help from their parents.The Parson’s are an Air Force family. Their father a debonair southern charmer is a Captain in the USAF. Their mother, the daughter of Polish immigrants raised in Tacoma, Washington is everything their father is not – dark, dour and reserved. Their one commonality is the love they have for their daughter Berner and their son Dell. Ultimately, due to the character weaknesses in both parents and the inability to support their family, a bank robbery is committed. From the planning or lack of, until the act itself, we know that this endeavor has no chance of succeeding.The story before the robbery, unfolds in the setting of Great Falls, Montana in 1960. It is an examination of small town life; what it means to be an American and the role of the white man and his relationships in shaping the plight of the Native American’s in the region. It has a triangle of race relations between a corrupt African American Pullman porter, local Native American cattle rustlers and Capt. Parson’s running a meat scam that carried over from his time in the USAF. The story after the robbery speaks briefly to the fall out and dissolution of the family but more importantly focuses on Dell, His twin sister Berner leaves to start her own life and it is not until the very end of the book that we discover what road she traveled and where she ends up. We do know that she is headed to San Francisco in an attempt to reunite with a boyfriend she had in Great Falls.Dell is taken to Canada. This occurs because of an arrangement Dell’s mother makes with an acquaintance. Once there, Dell is more or less provided with a job, very rudimentary accommodations and left to fend for himself. Throughout the book, Dell’s interest in chess is almost an allegory of how to survive in life. Sacrifices have to be made in order to succeed and like chess, the game of life cannot be rushed or fast forwarded in order to achieve the end game.This is not a book for readers who need action in order to hold their interest. The story is told in some detail through the eyes of a fifteen year old boy. It includes all the missed cues and misunderstandings of youth and the slow realizations of what is happening as a child is forced to grow up quickly. In that sense, the book is very much a meditation. It is somewhat poetic and the beauty is in the stark detail.This is the first book that I have read by Richard Ford but from other things I have read about this author this slow, melodic, poetic way of storytelling is a signature of Ford’s. If you can allow yourself to take the time and appreciate the slow pace of this book, you will definitely enjoy it. I did and I look forward to reading other works by this author.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Richard Ford does a nice job of telling the story of a life interrupted by the sins of adults -- and yet also well-lived. Nicely written adventure story, from the prospective of the boy living the life and the man reflecting back on it. First piece of his work I've read and it makes me want to read more!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together. Page 77Dell Parson and his twin sister Berner have their world turned upside down when their parents commit a crime that would forever separate their family. With his parents incarcerated and his sister taking off to make a life for herself, fifteen year old Dell is whisked off to the little god forsaken dot on a map in Saskatchewan. Hiding among strangers, Dell will come to terms with what life has given and taken and that sometimes life doesn't give us any answers, even when we try to ask the right questions. I'm not quite sure what to make of Canada after initially finishing the book. None of the actions of the characters in the books made any logical sense to me, even when they tried to give it an explanation. I'm not even sure what the point of the story was, but I am glad that despite having the odds stacked against him, and his numerous encounters with questionable people, Dell was able to maintain a semblance of an normal existence, whatever normal means. Given that Ford is a Pulitzer Prize winner, I'd want to give his other works a try, but judging Canada completely on its own merits, I'm not exactly convinced yet. Not a book I'd recommend that you have to pick up right at this very second.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The opening lines are already famous, and they lure us in with the promise that what follows will be just as good. “First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.”
    His parents "...were regular people tricked by circumstance and bad instincts, along with bad luck, to venture outside of boundaries they knew to be right, and then found themselves unable to go back.”
    His rhythm and his voice are remarkably consistent through the book. “Our family came to a stop in Great Falls, Montana, in 1956, the way many military families came to where they came to following the war.” The cadence carries you along, like a slow-moving boat bobbing along but nonetheless headed steadfastly in one direction.
    Part One is as promised, the story of his parents and the robbery, told from the perspective of the 15 year old son Dell. This is the strongest and most memorable part of the book. It's not just Dell who is coming of age, but in some ways his parents too. Dell says about his father, “During all these years I’ve thought about his eyes, and how they became so different. And since so much was about to change because of him, I’ve thought possibly that a long-suppressed potential in him had suddenly worked itself into visibility on his face. He was becoming who and what he was always supposed to be. He’d simply had to wear down through the other layers to who he really was.”
    The tensions builds slowly to the robbery.
    “Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.”
    He describes his parents heading to the robbery. They are still regular people, they haven't yet actually gone down that branch of the fork in the road they are approaching. “…It’s the edging closer to the point of no return that’s fascinating: all along the trip, chatting, sharing confidences, exchanging endearments — since their life was officially still intact.”
    Ford compares this to drifting on a raft, or up in a balloon. “You notice it, or you don’t notice it. But you’re already too far away, and all is lost.”
    It’s a slow-mo telling. Slow-mo, freeze while he digresses, more slow-mo. But still inexorably heading towards those robberies.
    “Lacking an awareness of consequence might’ve been their greatest flaw.”

    In Part 2 Dell is borne to Canada. “…you crossed borders to escape things and possibly to hide, and Canada in his view was a good place for that. But it also meant you became someone different in the process — which was happening to me, and I needed to accept it.”
    He struggles to regain equilibrium and a new perspective, difficult for a teenager who really hasn't even yet lived enough to develop those in the first instance. But he does start to figure some things out. “Things happen when people are not where they belong, and the world moves forward and back by that principle.”
    Occasionally he casually drops in a phrase that blends in so easily with its neighbours that you delay recognising its significance. It is said as if he knew the reader already knew that particular fragment, so there’s no point embellishing it or dwelling on it. 'There it is, as you know, and so of course this follows.' Except we didn’t know. At first reading I briefly wonder “did I miss that information the first time he told me?” But of course not, he has been quite careful not to tell us. The actual information flow is precisely calibrated. And so the story unfolds. He opens the doors to the future and to the murders with these casual lines.
    A 4 for the story, but a 5 for style and the wonderful voice.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Beautiful writing, but I had a few issues with the story. 1. How can the INCEST be one paragraph and not a big deal to either one? Seriously? No way. 2. What is the deal with Charlie Quarters? Is he a cross dresser or what? Weird. 3. All the hullabaloo about how "strange" and "weird" and "evil" AR is, but like, I kept waiting for it and it never happened, until that one moment when he shot the policemen. I was like, what???Other than that there was a lot of weird introspectiveness that I didn't find interesting or like reallllly helped the story at all.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ein Roman wie ein großer See. Man springt hinein, zieht ruhige Bahnen durchs Wasser und wird dann sanft hinausgespült, um sein Leben außerhalb weiterzuleben. Groß, ruhig, wunderschön. Eine Geschichte.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book left me somewhat perplexed, torn between its finely wrought language, each sentence a chiseled work of master craftsman, and its heavy-handed artificial parallel structure. The two halves of the book are like two artisan glass bottles on a window sill each filled with Ford's crystalline spring water words. (Did I just write that? Am I actually going to let that in?) I guess if that is supposed to be a criticism the metaphor for a better book would be an alpine spring, just there on the mountain begging to succor your spiritual thirst and turn the stars inside your mind bright. You know, Savage Detectives, or maybe Tree of Smoke, with no bottles in sight unless they are wine bottles.

    Charlie Quarters steals the show and is the most memorable character I've read since Perkus Tooth.

    Dell's 15 and 68 year old selves bleed together a bit too much sometimes.

    The core of the story is a metaphor about American economic life that is hidden is plain sight just like Arthur Remlinger. For me, this metaphor is what the book is really about.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was strange and beautiful.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.So starts one of my most baffling reads of the year. The story of 15 year old twins Dell and Berner Parsons is told by Dell in a reflective voice from many years in the future. It is a slow read: the prose, while laconic and sparse, is powerfully descriptive and evokes a mood that puts the reader right inside the head of the narrator. The pace is anything but thrilling. However, the story is riveting because there is enough revealed in the beginning to compel the reader to continue even when the going gets tough.The characters are not the most attractive people ever portrayed. In fact, some of them are downright bizarre. The motivations of the parents are very well explained, even if they aren't very laudatory. The father's previous peripatetic military career has made it difficult for the children to develop normal childhood friendships, or participate in school activities and left them feeling detached from any sense of a permanent home. The twins themselves are as different as chocolate and vanilla. Dell is timid, completely lacking in self-confidence, and incredibly unmotivated to do anything on his own. He just wants to enroll and stay in one school and join the chess club. His sister, on the other hand, is spunky, fed-up with the status quo, and in no way willing to continue wasting her time and talents on the current model of family life. The book is divided into three parts: Part I takes place mostly in Great Falls, Montana and centers around the life of this nuclear but dysfunctional family headed by a failed salesman father who has delusions of grandeur, and his wife who doesn't have a clue about how to encourage him toward some other lifestyle. In this part, the parents commit their crimes almost as a lark, and their already fractured life really begins to unravel.The book title led me to believe it was going to be about Canada, or at least would have that country as a setting, but it was not until Part II, page 207 of 432, that Dell begins his journey to Canada. Once he gets there, we encounter one of the most bizarre collections of characters ever presented. I found this part of the story especially hard to come to grips with because all of the people who make up the adult world of Dell Parsons are just not the kind of people I'm used to dealing with. The entire section is one long day after day parade of really unbelievable situations, of ignorance and disregard of the boy, of scenes bringing to mind indentured servitude, or total parental indifference, or incredible lack of any official oversight of either child. I really couldn't say whether it gives an accurate portrayal of Canada, but it does paint stunning word pictures of the geography and scenery of Saskatchewan. It is not until the rather short Part III that we get the grown up Dell's reflections on his life and how the events shaped in Montana and then Canada resolved to allow him to become the adult he is as he tells the story. In the end, we finally come to terms with all those unconventional situations and find a character reconciling his past with the present and future.The whole time I was reading this book, my reactions ranged wildly from really liking it (particularly Ford's way with words), to wanting to throw it across the room at exasperating situations and characters. The pace was so slow that at times I felt I was wasting my time, that nothing was ever going to happen, but then I'd realize that is often how teen-agers feel about life and I was then able to climb into Dell's skin to see things from his perspective. When I finished the book, I remember feeling that this was really an exceptional achievement. It is definitely a great book, and deserves the accolades it has received. I've seen many reviewers who claim it will be a classic (whatever the current definition of that is). Richard Ford is the only writer ever to win both the Pulitzer Prize and Pen/Faulkner Award for a single novel (Independence Day) and he has given us a reading experience that will definitely remain in the memory of all who immerse themselves in his eloquent, lean and poetic words.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The narrator of Richard Ford's Canada says he is a few years younger than Bobby Fisher. Fisher was born in 1943, so I figure the narrator was born in 1944-46. I was born in 1945, and like the narrator, was in my teens in the early 60's. That's when a good deal of the action of the novel takes place, the crazy actions of the narrator's parents, his own crazy actions with his sister, his having to hide out in Canada where additionally crazy things take place. That's the great bulk of the book, then nada, zip, until, in the last tiny section, the narrator is 66. In that final section, the narrator does say a very little about himself, that he has married, and become a high school teacher of English, I think. But between this and those teen years there yawns a great chasm, an emptiness, where I think all that one might call adulthood should be. But maybe this comes with age. I feel that too that some things that happened in my teen years are much more alive to me psychologically than the great crock of most of my so called adult life. Perhaps it is all biochemical. Though Ford does not hazard this explanation.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Finished Canada by Richard Ford today. Normally I'm not a big fan of literary books. They tend to move to slow for me and have characters I just don't like. Canada is a literary book. The pace is slow, the language sparse, and it has some very unlikable characters. I found it maddening at times, but then the author would write such a great sentence that would make me pause and contemplate what it meant. Don't get me wrong, I am still an unabashed genre reader and will always be. I want to be entertained first and foremost. But sometimes I want a little more and that's what this book did for me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I am a near-worshipper of Richard Ford. I loved his Sportswriter trilogy but this is maybe even better. It isn't a frame for domestic troubles, which he is so good at. It runs way deeper and literally almost every sentence is admirable. The construction, the character, the setting...Saskatchewan is not for the faint of heart or body. This fine book is for everyone - you, and you, and you, and especially you - do not miss it. I swear. Plus he lives in Boothbay, Maine, so could I be wrong? Your only gripe will be that you didn't write it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A bleak story told through the voice of a 15 year old whose life (and that of his twin sister) was drastically altered after their parents are imprisoned for a robbery. A haunting ‘coming of age’ and ‘loss of innocence’ tale by a masterful writer and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book takes us into the mind of a fifteen year old boy and his time spent in the wastelands of Canada after his parents have been sent to gaol for a bank robbery and he is left to be cared for by a friend of his mothers. He is sent to Canada to escape child welfare authorities. It is the story of his survival and his observations of the strange people he comes in contact with. I enjoyed it very much as it is told from the viewpoint of the grown up Del, at the age of 66 when he has just retired after a successful career as a schoolteacher. My only complaint is that I would have liked to know more of his life after he "got away" to the city and received an education, married and had a family, as I think it would have been difficult for him to adjust.